Cardenio
by Project Pegasus
Summary: A short story taking place in a world where the lost play of "Cardenio" isn't so lost. In 1906, in the French hamlet of Faylet, two sisters journey to the provincial capital to attend a performance of "Cardenio" with their brother, a soldier on leave.


_Cardenio_

**Part One**

"Madeleine," her mother, Mme Dupont, called towards the kitchen. To the Colonel, who had come to pay them a visit, her voice tinkled inquiringly after her daughter. But Madeleine knew better.

"Mother is in one of her moods," Madeleine sighed as she finished dusting confectioner's sugar on the serrated roofs of the pear tarts. She readied them for presentation, arranging them symmetrically, the honey-colored seashells peering up at her from the platter while she marshaled them into formation. She wiped her hands of the last of the confectioner's sugar before picking up the platter. She reminded herself to smile, and then held her face in an affable position as she walked the pastries into the family room.

"Ah, here is my Maddy," Mme Dupont said with a little too much affectation, making the announcement like a tacit apology for Madeleine's presence.

Madeleine strained to hold her smile in place.

"Don't forget the tea, dear," Mme Dupont said, her reminder following her daughter as she began to return to the dusky kitchen. "Or the wine. You'd like a glass of Sauternes, wouldn't you Colonel?"

"Is that wise mother?" Denise interjected wryly, "You complained for a month after Colonel Bernard drank all of our port the last time."

Mme Dupont registered her disapproval tactfully, while the Colonel remained impassive. Madeleine was held in shock until Denise broke the spell.

"I'll help Maddy with the tea and wine," she mumbled, getting up and retreating with Madeleine into the kitchen.

* * *

"Mother will certainly beat you when the colonel leaves," Madeleine said solicitously when they were alone together in the kitchen. Denise did not reply. Instead she went to the stove where she found that Madeleine had already begun to heat the water for the tea. While she waited for the kettle to reach a full boil, she sifted a tablespoon of black flakes into the teapot, a tall Russian thing with a busy cobalt-net pattern. It was part of the china set that Mme Dupont would proudly exhibit Colonel paid a visit, and that Madeleine would have to wash assiduously with baking soda when he went home. She noticed that some of the gold accents of the teapot had begun to flake when the rattling kettle began to erupt steam.

"Colonel Bernard isn't an unpleasant man," Madeleine argued faintheartedly. Still, Denise remained silent as she went from the hob to the cupboard for the rest of the china set: cups, saucers, a creamer, a sugar bowl, and the platter. "Besides," Madeleine added as she returned from the pantry with the half bottle of Sauternes, "He'll talk about Oliver sooner or later."

"I suppose," Denise conceded as cups and saucers clattered into place under her hands. "But why can't we just have our Oliver instead of him?" She finished pairing the cups with the saucers on the platter and leaned back on the counter while she waited for Madeleine to finish.

"You should at least be polite to him," Madeleine counseled as she twisted the corkscrew into the top of the bottle. "The Colonel seems very fond of Oliver and perhaps he'll give him a promotion."

"Wonderful," Denise snapped back, "That way he'll be stranded in that God forsaken desert forever!"

Madeleine lowered her head as she struggled to uncork the bottle

"I'm sorry, Maddy," Denise said as she approached her. "Here, let me help you with that." Madeleine held onto the corkscrew, already bored into the Sauternes, and presented the bottle to Denise. She gripped it where the neck met the body, and they both pulled gently away from each other until the cork was finally dislodged with a pop. The sisters giggled softly as the residual force of their tugging sent them back a few paces from each other.

"Shall we have a taste?" she asked Madeleine. She shook her head to refuse. If both Denise and she had a glass, mother would surely notice, she reasoned.

Denise poured herself a half glass and downed it in one swig, as Madeleine prepared a tray with two wine glasses for the Colonel and her mother.

"Sweet, but very strong," Denise said as she put a stopper in the bottle and placed it on the tray beside the two glasses. "This must have cost mother dearly. The best of everything in our household goes to the Colonel."

Denise handed her the wine tray while she picked up the heavier tray of tea and backed out of the kitchen, holding the door open with her foot while Madeleine passed into the hallway and toward the family room.

"The pear tarts are delicious," the Colonel commended the girls. "Your mother tells me that you made the them together." Denise nodded while Madeleine smiled shyly. "If only I could get my Cheryl to follow your example.

"That reminds me," he said turning to Denise, "Cheryl tells me that she saw you at the market last month. Did you see her?"

Denise winced. She wondered if this was the opening move in a retaliatory strike against her or the Colonel simply making small talk.

"I don't remember," Denise said cautiously and noncommittally as she glanced over at Madeleine.

"Colonel," Madeleine said after uneasy pause, "Mother says that you just came back from the desert. Please tell us about it!"

"Madeleine," Mme Dupont chastened, "Perhaps Colonel Bernard does not wish to think about the colonies when he is at home in France."

"Nonsense Gitte," the Colonel said brightly, "On the contrary, I'm glad to know that the young people take an active interest in the colonies." He reached into his leather attaché case which was at his feet and removed a map of France and French Africa from it. "Would you like me to show you our recent campaign into the Sahara?"

Madeleine nodded and shifted the tea, tart and wine trays to one side of the crowded table so that the Colonel could lay his map on it. He put it down with an assertive confidence.

Madeleine noticed that in the Colonel's map, the French occupied areas of West Africa and the Sahara were colored light blue, but Algeria and France were designated by a more assertive shade of blue. What was even more curious was that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic were not blue but beige, the same color as the paper or the sand of a desert. It was as though the seas and oceans had broken the banks of Greater France and emptied themselves into it. Madeleine wondered what it would be like if all the world's water poured into France, leaving the ocean floor barren and exposed. Certainly Fayet would be flooded and her little home along with it. Perhaps she could take refuge at the colonel's magnificent residence: not only did it have two stories, but it was also situated at the top of a hill overlooking the commune. But that would not do. Denise would not get along with the Colonel or Cheryl. Despite his best efforts to be magnanimous, after months, even years cooped up together, the Colonel would probably tire of Denise and place both of the sisters in a dinghy and set them adrift, Madeleine prognosticated gloomily.

"I'm sure that everyone in Fayet has taken notice of France's recent victory in the Sahara. The Bilma-Djanet expedition was an unqualified success," the Colonel said as though he were discussing a good day at the racetracks. Mme Dupont and Denise joined the Colonel and Madeleine around the map. With the utmost earnestness, the Colonel began discussing the expedition as though he were responsible for its planning and success: an unwary observer could have mistaken the Colonel for a field marshal with the Dupont women as his lieutenants.

"Here is Bilma," he said pointing to a dot in the interior of the African continent before sliding his finger slightly to the northwest, "And this is Djanet. As you can see, they are the most important links in this oasis chain. We were lucky that old dog Etienne gave the orders to move out when he did. If he had waited another month, our eastern flank would be swarming with Turks. But luckily because of his bold leadership, we have formed a decisive perimeter the Turks dare not breach.

"Your Oliver distinguished himself as a soldier in the flying column that secured Bilma. Can you imagine Oliver riding on a camel, with a hand on his rifle waiting for the Turks the whole time?" he said to all the women but in a Once-Upon-a-Time cant that was most suited to Madeleine. Denise found it not only patronizing, but also unbearable because she recognized it as the register he took when he first seduced Oliver into joining the army. "No doubt your brother kept a keen eye out for them, anticipating the whites of their turbans cresting over the horizon at any moment! Or maybe he was struck with insomnia, kept up by the anxiety that the Turks had already fortified the oases, every dune he traversed bringing him closer to the enemy's artillery!"

"Colonel Bernard," Madeleine said softly, studying the map, "Why did they color France dark blue, but make the Sahara light blue?"

"France is dark blue because it is the center, and the colonies are lighter because they aren't as important."

"But then why does Oliver have to stay in the Sahara if it's not important?"

"How can we afford not to be there?" he said, shocked. "Think about it this way: when you go outside in the afternoon, what would you say if you couldn't see your shadow?"

"I would think that I was dead," she replied. "Or a ghost."

"Exactly! The same with France," he said didactically, "Without our colonies, we would be like a ghost without a body. Does that make sense?"

She shook her head.

"Or think about it this way," he said as he picked up his used desert plate, "When you see that there are crumbs and a little powdered sugar on my plate, what do you think?"

Madeleine feared that perhaps the Colonel was very sensitive to the presence of uncleanliness. "Does it mean that it's time to wash the plate," she ventured.

"No Madeleine," he corrected her, "The crumbs and the leftover powdered sugar are proof that there was once a pear tart on this plate. So you see, we need our colonies as evidence to prove that France exists!"

Denise stared into the pale blue heart of Africa as though she were trying to find Oliver stranded somewhere in Colonel Bernard's map. She half expected to hear him whispering from the map, asking her to break him out of there.

"But Colonel Bernard," Madeleine persisted, still not satisfied, "Why is Algeria also dark blue if it is in Africa?"

"Algeria has representation in the National Assembly."

"And the rest of Africa doesn't want it?"

"It's complicated," he said, rubbing his chin. He pointed to France's eastern border and said, "Many living in Algeria come from here—"

"—Alsace-Lorraine!" Madeleine said proudly, remembering what the schoolmaster, M. Genet, had taught her about the rest of France outside of Fayet.

"Exactly!" the Colonel said, "Many of them couldn't accept the disgrace of living as German subjects so they moved to Algeria instead. Now do you see why France fights for the colonies? We must have places to live in, and land full of crops and rubber plantations and iron mines so we'll be ready to take our land back from the Kaiser the next time he wants to pick a fight!"

"Colonel Bernard," Denise said, breaking into his rhetorical crescendo, "If you march into Alsace-Lorraine with your army, I suspect that the Kaiser would have you arrested, not make territorial concessions; furthermore, if you think that fighting over crumbs and empty plates will make your pear tart reappear, you are greatly mistaken."

"Denise!" Mme Dupont hissed.

"Young lady," Colonel Bernard admonished gravely, "I could not imagine France without her colonies." He wanted to go further. He wanted to ask her if she thought that France could have established an alliance first with Russia and then Britain—yes, Britain—without her colonies, especially after being beaten so handily by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War. But he was not shaken by her effrontery. There were many who had their doubts about the colonies. He had met them all: apocalyptic communists who spoke of imperial exploitation and the workers of the world, full-blooded Frenchmen who thought that France sullied herself by bringing Africans and Asians into the body politic, and people like Denise who just had personal axes to grind. He never took any of it personally, just as he did not take bullying tribal chiefs or killing Tripolitanian bandits personally.

Colonel Bernard returned his map to his attaché case unperturbed, like a traveling salesman unable to sell a pair of scissors, but still confident in the quality of his wares. He understood from the strain in Mme Dupont's voice, as she discussed town gossip and the provincial capital's theater trope, that she was afraid that Denise had offended him.

But he was not shaken by her effrontery even though his hand shook with agitation as he sipped his third glass of Sauternes. He knew for certain history was on his side. He had pressed his commanding officers to occupy Bilma and Djanet for months before intelligence uncovered Turkish designs on the oasis complex. The French noose was tightening around Morocco, the last independent holdout in North Africa. It was only a matter of time until France would strangle her into submission. Whether in his professional life or his personal life, the Colonel understood how to take orders or sip tea or nibble pastries until the time was right to move against his enemies. The undisciplined ones like the Moroccans, the Turks and Denise would never endure; they lacked the clarity of vision to even consider that a rope could be turned into a noose until it was already around their necks. France had suffered this same fate thirty-five years ago when she had underestimated the Bismarck (indeed, the Colonel remembered how as a newly minted office from the Academy he shared the glib opinion of his commanding officers that war with the Germans would be swift and glorious) but France would be triumphant. Even now, the German colonies were flanked in Africa and Asia but even more importantly, France and Russia flanked the German Empire on the Continent, while the English bottled her access to the high seas.

He knew that France's birthright guaranteed her ultimate reunification; he would just have to demonstrate patience as history ineluctably shifted in her favor toward the fulfillment of this one far-off divine event.

* * *

Madeleine carefully inspected her mother's teapot for stains after washing away the baking soda that she had used to scrub it. She pretended not to notice that Denise moved haltingly around the dark-inky kitchen, the consequence of the severe discipline Mme Dupont exercised on her after the Colonel departed.

"The Colonel and his stupid maps," Denise groused as she finished putting away the last of the wine glasses and joined Madeleine at the sink.

"Do you think it was necessary to treat the colonel as you did?" she asked. "After all, the Colonel was kind enough to let us know that Oliver will be home on leave in six month's time."

Denise smiled to herself. She could imagine, in six month's time, Oliver standing on the train platform one fine morning, sun burnt but happy to be home. He would be exhausted after having to endure the circuitous train ride from Marseilles through a half dozen hubs before arriving in the provincial capital, but he would be heartened at the sight of his sisters.

The more Denise mulled it over, the more a holiday in the city with her siblings began appealing to her. If Oliver returned immediately to Fayet, Colonel Bernard and mother would shower him with praise for his service to France. The Priest would bless him and reaffirm that he is doing God's work. If he strolled the streets on a market day, the young women from the town and the surrounding countryside would faun over him as he announced his manliness with his starched uniform and his blackened boots.

But if Madeleine and she could spend the day alone with Oliver, perhaps they could remind him how pleasant life was before he joined the army. Perhaps she could even convince him not to reenlist when his tour of duty came to an end. True, the provincial capital did not have an opera house or even a museum, but it did have a respectable theater and a recognizable café culture. Denise knew that she had little latitude to act: at home and abroad, Oliver was commended for being a model soldier, a good son, and an exemplary citizen of France. The provincial capital was the only possible terrain between the two worlds in which she could still maneuver.

The problem was reaching the provincial capital without her mother or the Colonel in tow.

"Madeleine," she said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we greeted Oliver at the train station? I mean, it would be inconsiderate to say the least if Oliver came all the way back from the colonies, and we couldn't even make the trip out to the _chef lieu_ to pick him up."

"Oh certainly, but how would we make the trip? We had to give up our horses years ago."

"Perhaps if you asked mother, she could speak to the Colonel and we could borrow his brougham."

"What a wonderful idea! I'll talk to mother in the morning.

"Thank you Madeleine. I knew I could count on you."

**Part Two**

The girls sat patiently in the half empty theater waiting for the matinee performance of _Cardenio_ to begin. Madeleine hoped that Oliver would return from the restroom before the lights went down and the curtain rose.

"Denise, I simply love _Cardenio_! Don't you?"

She nodded her head dismissively and turned her head to see if Oliver were on his way back yet.

"And the theater! What a lark! Don't you love the theater as well?"

"Yes," Denise snapped, "Except when people can't keep quiet in the theater."

"During the performance, she means," Madeleine added quickly, "That's what you meant, isn't it, Denise?"

"Yes," Denise reaffirmed, "I dislike it when people don't know when to stop talking when they are in a theater."

Cheryl Bernard sat impassively. Denise despised that blank face that both the Colonel and his daughter shared. She feared both of them for different reasons: the Colonel because he had long since allowed his inner life to atrophy until his will had become identical to those of the state, and Cheryl because her vacant expression reminded her of a cow whose stare was unchanging whether she was waiting to be milked or slaughtered. Denise knew to fear Colonel's castle intrigue as much as Cheryl's good-natured willingness to oblige. Denise also was painfully aware that being cognizance of her state of affairs would not ensure her success. Everything hinged on Oliver, who took his seat between Denise and Cheryl.

"Oliver," Cheryl chirped, "So I herd u liek _Cardenio_?"

"Meh?" Oliver said, who as an enlisted private had long forgotten that his opinion could be sought, "Iz can has edumaction, ins't it"

Madeleine strained to keep the conversation comprehensible while Denise stared on in disbelief.

"Iz mah favortest play," Cheryl said, confirming Oliver's assessment. "I noez sum lines dat ur gonna luv."

"Excuse me," Denise interrupted, "But while you are home, Oliver, you do not need to speak French. Your commanding officer is not here to give you lashings or order you to remove the latrine slime for speaking our mother tongue."

"But Denise," Oliver said, no longer speaking in French, "Shouldn't Frenchmen speak French? Our _patios_ is a vestige of our feudal history. French helps all of France to converse with itself."

"My God, listen to you! Not even M. Genet is as militant about forcing us to use French!"

Denise knew that she was alienating Oliver, but she could not help showing her frustration. Nothing had gone as she had planned. Months ago, she could not believe her good luck when both her mother and the Colonel had agreed to allow Madeleine and her to travel to the provincial capital alone. He agreed to provide his _ordonnance_ to act as their driver and chaperone.

But when the Colonel's brougham arrived with Cheryl sitting in it early this morning, Denise recognized the Colonel's handiwork.

"So the Colonel intends to set his daughter loose on us, does he?" she said to Madeleine, providing an exegesis of the Colonel's conspiracy against her.

"Perhaps she simply has errands to run in the _chef lieu_," Madeleine rebutted.

But Madeleine's interpretation would not do. The sisters spied out of the window as Cheryl alighted from the carriage and approached their home. There was something else that distressed Denise besides Cheryl's mere presence.

"My God," she said to Madeleine, "Have you ever seen a young woman wear so much and so little at the same time?"

That was Denise's first premonition that Cheryl was to be more than simply a spy for the Colonel, and she was doing her best to confirm Denise's initial suspicions. When Cheryl came into contact with Oliver, she hazarded a clumsy transformation into a smart, urbane socialite who spoke halting French and declared it a "lark" to attend the theater. In alchemical terms, it was as though Oliver acted as some feeble Philosopher's stone that transmuted Cheryl from a lump of lead into a shinier lump of lead, but into not gold. No doubt when she returned to Fayet that evening, she would revert to being a country bumpkin, picking her nose and declaring _that_ a lark.

"Oliver," Cheryl persisted, "When you were gone I was telling Denise and Madeleine how much I love _Cardenio._"

Then in her best thespian elocution she intoned:

O rare instinct!

When shall I hear all through? This fierce abridgment

Hath to it circumcised branches, which

Distinction should be rich in. Where? How liv'd you?

How parted with your brothers? how first met them?

Why fled you from the court? and whither?

"First, it's 'circumstantial' not 'circumcised,'" Denise corrected, "And second, that's from _Cymbeline_, not _Cardenio_."

"Oh," Cheryl said feebly in her defense.

"Really Denise," Oliver said coming to her rescue, "Shakespeare's late plays are all so much alike, with the nobility coming out of exile to retake their usurped estates, dead children returning to claim their patrimony, widowers being reunited with their resurrected wives, and adulteresses proven morally respectable. Perhaps at times Shakespeare himself had trouble keeping all the plots straight, and maybe he made the same mistake as Cheryl, placing Imogen amongst the Saracens before returning to Andalusia."

Denise's face darkened with a glower as Cheryl's face shined with approval.

Further speculations were tabled as the house lights were lowered and the footlights dawned.

* * *

Madeleine had always enjoyed attending the theater. Accompanying her father to a performance of _Phèdre_ was one of the few memories she had of him. Years later, what remained of the family (Oliver had been freshly shipped to the colonies) attended a production of _The Lady of the Camellias_. Now, for Oliver's homecoming, she was watching her third play, _Cardenio_.

She was thankful that every time she went to the theater, she was able to watch a play that was mentioned from time to time in adult conversation. When they discussed the beauty of the French language, she was almost certain that it was only a matter of time until _Phèdre_ was praised as its supreme achievement. She had gone to see the play when she had not yet begun to attend the little schoolhouse, so she could not understand the French being used by the actors. The only feature of the language Madeleine recalled was that the dialogue was very measured, rhythmic and regular; based on aural evidence alone, she agreed with the adults: French was very beautiful. She wondered why she had never met anyone in Fayet who spoke as the actors did. Perhaps that was how adults, like her father, addressed one another, while they spoke in a more pedestrian register to the children.

Madeleine understood that _Cardenio_ too was an important play. M. Genet had used portions of it in grammar exercises, and he found ways of relating it to the circumstances of modern France. Thus, even though the actors were now speaking entirely in French, she found it not impossible to negotiate its plot.

What she saw on stage more or less conformed to what had been discussed in her schoolhouse: Cardenio, an ambitious young merchant, falls in love with Luscinda, the daughter of the Conde of Olivares. Cardenio entrusts his friend, the powerful land magnate Don Fernando, to press his marriage suit at the court of the Conde while he attends to business in Lisbon. When Don Fernando is presented at court and he makes Cardenio's marriage proposal known, the Conde is unimpressed, but finds in Don Fernando the ideal son-in-law. Don Fernando protests, honorably and resolutely arguing that he is already betrothed to Dorotea, one of Luscinda's ladies-in-waiting, and also he has sworn a sacred bond of friendship to Cardenio.

Don Fernando paused for a moment on stage. He has forgotten his lines, Dense thought.

But the lapse was only a momentary interruption and did not long impede the Conde's temptation of him. The Conde persists and worms his way into his psyche by implanting the mere possibility of being both the next Conde of Olivares and the husband of the most beautiful woman in Andalusia. He begins by simply entertaining the Conde's fantasy not as a foregone conclusion, but simply with an awareness that a previously unthought possibility (one possibility out of an infinite number of possibilities) has just been made thinkable to him. But the obsession soon takes root and refuses to relent until it has remade the world in its image.

Denise sat up alertly as Fernando began to recite his monologue on the paradox of desire: both the futility of desire and the futility of resisting desire. This was the celebrated "Lost Coin" monologue: in order to decry the Conde's rottenness and resist what the Conde wants him to want, Don Fernando must name his temptation and give it voice. This ironically cements his all-consuming desire with the Conde's title and his daughter. Denise mouthed the words to herself as Don Fernando considered that a man can accept his horse dying suddenly, but if he finds his horse, which he assumes to be dead, tied up outside of an inn, a duel will surely follow. The obverse is also true: if a man loses a coin but does not notice its absence, he is not troubled, but only make him aware that his coin is missing and he will be frenzied until it is restored to him; likewise, before he had his audience with the Conde, Don Fernando never would have though that marriage to Dorotea was anything but an honor, but now she will not suffice.

Denise appreciated the Lost Coin monologue, but wondered if Shakespeare had been a little too sure that people always lost their coins first before dropping everything to search for them. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to say that people were condemned to search for coins that had never been lost in the first place, thus guaranteeing the failure of their escapade from the outset. She imagined Oliver with an empty coin purse roving over the Sahara finding only bits of tin and flint while his treasure lay at home in Fayet.

Luscinda proves better at resisting the Conde's specious logic. Her heart remains true to Cardenio even as her father employs a variety of tactics to convince her that her place is with Don Fernando: her filial duty to him, the political advantages of such a union, her financial security, Don Fernando's decorated lineage. Finally, he foregoes trying to win her consent and in a bald exercise of his authority, he demands that she marry him.

Luscinda reluctantly submits. She has an encounter with Dorotea that nearly turns violent until she is able to convince her that she is being forced to marry Don Fernando against her will. The two women then conspire with each other a ruse to deceive both the Conde and Don Fernando.

Meanwhile, Dorotea dispatches a messenger to Lisbon to inform Cardenio of the plan, but rumors of the impending marriage between Luscinda and Don Fernando find Cardenio before the messenger can, and he departs for Andalusia in a blinding rage, vowing to murder the lovers after they take their marriage vows.

On the day of the marriage ceremony, he hides behind an arras in the cathedral. He readies his sword as the priest begins to lead Luscinda in her vows, but there is a stir as Luscinda takes her own life with a concealed bodkin. Cardenio emerges from the arras to extract his revenge on Don Fernando, but fails when the Conde's men intervene.

For drawing his sword in a house of God and for threatening Don Fernando's life, the Conde condemns Cardenio to death, but Don Fernando intercedes on his behalf and the sentence is reduced to permanent exile. Dorotea and the ladies-in-waiting remove Luscinda's body as the Conde makes a solemn pronouncement on the mysterious ways of God and the need for faith, a speech that incidentally absolves him of any responsibility.

The curtains fell and the house lights came on as the audience began to clap.

"Shall we go to the lobby for a smoke?" Oliver asked as he reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.

* * *

Denise had yet to accepted the idea of Oliver smoking. When he first alighted from his train, he greeted his sisters a tepid kiss on each of their checks before lighting up a cigarette and huffing it down with more enthusiasm.

Now as they stood in the lobby of the theater next to an ashtray, Denise could sense the same ambivalence in Oliver. At first she thought that perhaps he was anxious about finishing his cigarette before intermission came to a close, but she came to the firm conclusion that the presence of his sisters irritated him. It infuriated her that he only seemed to come to life when he was smoking cigarettes or speaking French with Cheryl or inventing apologetics for Cheryl's questionable grasp of Shakespeare.

"Oliver," Madeleine said, mercifully breaking the silence, "We studied _Cardenio_ at the schoolhouse. Luscinda isn't dead is she? She went to hide with the Saracens like you did."

"Yes I suppose you could put it like that, Maddy" Oliver said, "Except that I live among the Tuareg, not the Saracens."

"Do they ride on camels and trade spices and perfumes and silks like Luscinda does while she is in the desert?"

"They still do have camel caravans, but they mostly transport blocks of salt, goat cheese and dates. Nothing exotic, just what they need to live and some light luxuries."

"Denise, imagine having to ride on a camel across a desert just to get some cheese and salt," Madeleine said, trying to include Denise in the conversation.

"Yes," she said peevishly. "But that still makes more sense than riding a camel across the desert for a silly watering hole that nobody cares about until the Turks want it."

"Denise," Cheryl interjected softly but firmly, "You shouldn't say such things. Daddy and Oliver do France a great service by risking everything for the colonies!"

Cheryl quivered in bewilderment. She believed in her father's importance just as she had believed in waking up every morning to find that she still had two feet. Denise was equally bewildered. Ever since Oliver had joined the army, Denise pretended not to see her in the market and if contact were unavoidable, such as during their tea dates, she would regularly check her watch and yawn while Cheryl was at her most earnest. Cheryl accepted the personal slights with equanimity, but this she could not suffer.

"Your father," Denise began, keen to wound Cheryl, "Has been shaking his fist at the Germans ever since they pushed him aside to overrun Paris. In thirty-five years he has not learned to be a gracious loser. He would rather send my Oliver on some fool's errand in the Sahara than admit defeat."

"That's enough Denise," Oliver said with an almost juridical irrevocability while taking Cheryl's hand, "I wanted to wait until we all returned to Fayet so that mother and the Colonel could announce this, but perhaps now would be a more appropriate time. I have spoken to the Colonel, and he has agreed to give me Cheryl's hand in marriage."

Denise said nothing. In books, women fainted when such revelations were made. How impractical, she had always thought, and even now she did not feel the need to make a spectacle of herself; instead, she stood dumb and lost.

The wizened usher had begun to stalk the lobby with his four-chimed glockenspiel like a liveried Gabriel sounding his trumpet announcing the end of times. The notes were undemanding but insistent. Through its unrelenting repetition alone it compelled recognition and solicited compliance.

Men snubbed out what was left of their cigarettes in nearby ashtrays. Blue smoke sputtered out of the salt-and-pepper ash of the discarded nubs as the men shuffled back into the theater to take their seats.

The usher passed by their party. His glockenspiel's light and crystalline taps stirred Denise, vaguely rocking her like Oliver's train had done to the platform, but leaving her unchanged.

But all the while, a long way off, a warm hand was tethered to her own, calling out to her, refusing to let her go, but patient in awaiting a response.

Finally, Denise squeezed Madeleine's hand in recognition.

"Congratulations," she said pleasantly to Oliver and Cheryl, doing her best to be gracious in defeat.

**Part Three**

The Colonel and Cheryl departed the Dupont residence and returned home late that evening. When they made their goodbyes to the rest of the family on the Dupont's porch, Denise could not overhear their conversation from her room, but it did not take much imagination to reproduce the Colonel's dithyrambic eulogy of Oliver, while her mother echoed his acclaim and expressed gratitude for all that the Colonel had done for the family. The conversation would be safe and worn, like the lace curtains in her room or her flannel nightgown. It would be a performance in which she would have been a silent bit player, like one of Luscinda's ladies-in-waiting who carry her from the stage after her mock suicide or a member of the Saracen tribe that presents bolts of silk to Don Fernando near the play's conclusion.

Denise sat alone in her room late into the night, repeating the day up until that moment. She questioned if there were anything she could have done to have altered the day's outcome, but her narrative of defeat was ironclad. The illusion of this day being a contest of moral imaginations between the Colonel and her was a sham; he had predetermined the whole affair and duped her into being a willing party in her own humiliation. When the Bernard's brougham arrived that morning bearing Cheryl, Denise only wished that she could have appreciated how delicious the irony was: Cheryl was not the interloper or the spy; it was she who had become redundant and more superfluous than the Colonel's _ordonnance._

During the ride to the _chef lieu_, Denise was busy with stratagems and complex schemes to create cohesion amongst the siblings and foster a sense of solidarity that could have rivaled the Holy Family. Progressively, events had turned against Denise until she became passive and inert on the ride home, listening to Oliver, Madeleine and Cheryl evaluate the play.

Madeleine's primary concern was still with the Saracens and the Tuaregs.

"Do the Tuareg wear colorful turbans, and pointed shoes and capes and carry daggers with them like the Saracens?" she asked Oliver.

"No," Oliver answered, "They mostly wear simple shirts and trousers, loose and flowing to keep them cool."

"But they are helpful, aren't they? When we discussed _Cardenio_ at the schoolhouse, M. Genet said that the Arabs in the colonies are eager to help the French just like the Saracens who help Luscinda to return home and when Don Fernando tries to steal her inheritance."

"It might not be quite like that," Oliver admitted, almost immediately sorry that he had.

"But you are friends with them, aren't you?"

"With some of them."

"How can you be friends with some of them and not others?"

"Well, think of it this way," Oliver offered, "If Denise and you were having a row, but you still needed to do the chores together, you'd work with one another even if you didn't get along, right?"

"But I never fight with Denise," Madeleine said, still not satisfied.

Oliver sighed. The scope of his justification exhausted, Cheryl brought the conversation back to M. Genet's discussion of the play.

"Father says that M. Genet has such profound interpretations of _Cardenio_. He really makes you understand how it represents France fighting to restore its glory."

She went on to recapitulate M. Genet's canonical reading of the play: it is a parable for the destiny of France. After having to wander in the desert for a number of years, she would reclaim her patrimony from the amoral usurper, Germany. After she made this pronouncement, she smiled at Oliver proudly, secure in her confidence of who would protect her and France.

When the brougham reached the Dupont home, Denise discovered that the Colonel was inside along with Mme Dupont. She greeted the Colonel tepidly before asking her mother if she could be excused to her room.

"You're ill, Denise?" her mother asked her.

"Yes," she replied flatly. Even though she was tempted by the smell of lamb stew and the bread still baking in the oven, the Colonel's very presence reminded her of his triumph. And Oliver, so proud of his adoption into the Bernard family, did not even observe that he had dropped Denise like a worn and clipped coin.

"Very well," Mme Dupont said, giving her dispensation. Denise could tell that she was unconvinced, but was without the inclination to press the issue any further.

When Denise made an appearance in the dining room to say goodnight to the rest of the family, she noticed the Colonel's attaché case on the floor. Sure enough, the Colonel had brought his maps with him, and once again the family's attention was centered on the map of Greater France while Oliver, in an unwitting pitch-perfect imitation of the Colonel six months earlier, demonstrated the routes he had taken across the Sahara under the command of Colonel Laperrine to secure Bilma.

* * *

When the household was asleep, Denise quietly left her room and made her way toward the kitchen. As she passed through the family room, she noticed the Colonel's hated emblem, his map on the coffee table.

The map was smaller than the posters she had seen across the _chef lieu_ advertising for cigarettes or detergents. It was perhaps the same size as lingering announcement of the theater's repertoire from last season not yet plastered over. An unthinking hawker could have used the map to wrap a fish for a customer, or it could have been neglected and left to rot in a damp basement or blown away during the spring rains. But instead, the reviled map had taken on such a familiarity that even she had long since become accustomed to its adversarial lineaments.

Sitting down to the map, she charted an unseen line from Bilma to the unmarked Fayet, tracing the invisible passageway like a silver thread with her finger. She understood that it was the Colonel's map that mediated her contact with Oliver, indeed the only thing that made it a possibility.

The map reminded her of the second half of _Cardenio_, in which Luscinda and the Saracens, who have traveled to Lisbon to trade with the local merchants, meet Cardenio. Cardenio, who does not recognize Luscinda, begins to speak of the gossip in the Iberian Peninsula, especially the death of the heirless Conde and Don Fernando's successful scheme to inherit his title and land. Luscinda reveals her identity to Cardenio, and the two decide to contact Dorotea, who is still active at court. When she learns that Luscinda is alive, she creates a plan for Luscinda to reveal that her suicide was a hoax. The Saracens, including Luscinda, present themselves to Don Fernando as merchants eager to sell him the silk for the robe he will wear during his investiture. They display silks dyed in colors that do not please him. He rejects bolt after bolt of silk until finally Luscinda unfurls her death shroud to the astonishment of all and reclaims her patrimony. The play ends with the promise of marriage: Cardenio to the revived Luscinda and Don Fernando to the longsuffering Dorotea.

The Colonel had taken everything from Denise and left only this map in return. Perhaps she could have cherished the map as Oliver's death shroud but it was anything but that; it had spirited him away without even leaving his body. Oliver now walked the shadowlands between Bilma and Fayet, wandering aimlessly through the French Empire for eternity and without a death shroud that could announce his return to life.

She refused to have the map pollute her family any longer. She gripped it by the corner, carelessly mangling the partitioned inset of Madagascar in her fury and marched into the kitchen.

"The Colonel and his stupid maps," she nearly wept as she found a box of matches and went to the stove. She flung open the grate of the stove and began to fumble with the box of matches, only to drop it in her agitation. When it hit the ground, it was as though the box shattered into hundreds of wooden shards as the matches scattered across the stone floor.

She kicked the box away and stamped on the matches as they snapped and splintered under her foot.

"Denise," a quiet voice came from the door of the kitchen. "If you dropped those matches, I can help you sweep them up."

"Madeleine!" Denise said in surprise.

She tiptoed into the room past Denise on her way to the closet for the broom and dustpan. She handed the dustpan to Denise, who held it with one hand as she gripped the Colonel's map in the other. She stood still as Madeleine began sweeping around her, beneath the stove and against the wall, gathering the strewn wooden needles from the circumference around Denise and collecting them into a single pile.

Denise kneeled down and held the dustpan in place as Madeleine's broom carried the matches over the cusp of the dustpan and into the scoop. The sisters then went to the counter to divide the matches that could be salvaged from those that were ruined beyond use.

"I'm sorry," Denise said, after they had worked together in silence for a while.

"Don't be sorry."

"I meant about today."

Madeleine stopped sifting through the matches. She weighed her words and spoke with purpose.

"Denise, I thought you would be happy that Oliver is home from the colonies."

"I am. It's just that I thought he would be more eager to see us than the Bernards."

"But Denise, the Bernards are his life now. Even before he enlisted, he always talked about life beyond Fayet. Nobody around here seemed to interest him except for the Colonel and M. Genet, but only when he discussed faraway places like Indochina or Canada."

During the six months in which Denise had imagined and scripted Oliver's homecoming, she realized that the young man in her daydreams was anybody but her brother. Had a changeling in a French army uniform alighted from the train that morning, Madeleine would have suspected a sea change. But if a wily dissembler, well versed in Denise's fantasies, had embraced the girls warmly before treating them to some coffee and chocolates at the station's café, she would have been so pleased by this imposter that the real Oliver would have eventually been leached from her memory. But it _had_ been the real Oliver who stood on the train platform that fine morning, sun burnt, exhausted, and impatient to embrace his new fiancé.

"Is that the Colonel's map?" Madeleine asked after they had finished sorting through the matches. Denise nodded her head.

"May I see it?" she asked.

"Of course," Denise said as she reluctantly handed the cursed artifact to Madeleine, who spread the map between them.

She thoughtfully smoothed out the curling and crumpled Madagascar and the Indian Ocean as she pointed to the Sahara.

"Do you suppose that Luscinda and the Saracens traveled the same trading routes as Oliver and the Tuareg?"

"I couldn't say," she responded, "Why do you care so much about the Saracens and the Tuareg?"

She considered for a moment before responding. "I suppose I wonder how they can live in the desert where they only have dates, salt and cheese to eat. I only have to go to the pump for water, but they have to ride a camel for days to an oasis. I do hope that Oliver shares his water at Bilma with them."

Madeleine looked quizzically at the map and began pointing at the section of the Mediterranean Sea that separated France from Algeria. "Do you find it odd that the oceans are colored beige like the paper and not blue?"

"Not really. That's just a convention of cartography."

"Yes, but at the same time, France and Algeria are dark blue, and the Sahara is light blue. When I first saw this map, I thought that it makes it look as though the oceans have flooded France.

"But look," she said, pointing to the Sahara, "The Sahara is light blue. Perhaps if the oceans rushed into Africa, it would flood Algeria but maybe it would turn the Sahara into a lovely garden. Instead of riding camels, the Tuareg could pilot gondolas across the Sahara! And Oliver wouldn't have to fight over shallow puddles of salty water because there would be plenty for everyone to drink! Can you imagine it, Denise?"

Denise peered into the Colonel's hateful map, which had been made both strange and familiar by Madeleine's imagination.

"Yes," Denise said, picking up the thread of Madeleine's narrative, "And instead of surviving on dates and salt, they could plant the most marvelous fruits: runners of strawberries that you had to be careful not to trip over, and whole shrubs of raspberry plants that spread until they practically become weeds. And terraced paddies of rice like in Indochina. Have you seen them in pictures?"

Madeleine nodded.

"They look like muddy pools that are growing the most ridiculous green beards!"

Madeleine giggled along with Denise.

"And orchards," she continued, "Groves and groves of citrons that Oliver could pack in wooden boxes lined with wax paper."

"What if he met Luscinda and the Saracens on their back to Andalusia to stop Don Fernando? Oliver could trade his citrons and bunches of paper-red cactus flowers for some of her silks and incense."

"Except Luscinda would have to be careful not to give away her shroud by accident," Denise said. "Death cannot mark her as long as she keeps it."

* * *

This short story was prepared as the final project for Professor J.T.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.


End file.
